


Tonight, fire

by More11a



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Feels, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tragedy, fire imagery, gosh I love finding a metaphor and building whole stories around it, sad Steve, scuse me while I miss this guy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 10:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14830938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More11a/pseuds/More11a
Summary: All the losses in Steve's life feel like fire, and losing Bucky for good felt a lot like burning alive.





	Tonight, fire

**Author's Note:**

> Consider this a piece of therapeutic writing... because Infinity War? Nu-huh. No fucking way.  
> So, here, have some Steve in mourning, and I'm sorry.

_Tonight, fire._  
The race of fire.  
And what the hell else to say but... 

_run._

_(Robert Creeley)_

Everything is fire. Not artillery fire, but a roaring, all-consuming inferno of flame and smoke. It makes his eyes water and his lungs burn, and then the fire touches his skin and he screams, flailing and thrashing until the cool night air hits him and he's in bed, and his eyes are still watering and his lungs still burning. 

All the losses in Steve's life feel like fire. Sometimes the flames are blazing high up into the sky, sometimes it's just glowing embers that he can almost touch with curiosity until they burn his fingers. Sometimes he plays with the flames, teasing and dodging, poking and prodding to see if they will still burn him.  
They always do. 

In his sleep, he's not so determined. He wishes the fire didn't come then, but it does almost every night, scorching his flesh off his bones and engulfing everything he loves.  
Super-metabolism or not, his whole body should be covered in burns and scars, but they evaporate into nothingness, not even a reminder to himself of what he lost. Sometimes he thinks it would be easier to look at himself and see all the things that have happened, but all he's got is this face and this body and it hasn't torn him limb from limb this time either, although that's how it feels on the inside – it's all trapped in his heart with no visible traces. 

In a mean, childish way he wishes he could express how he feels. He hasn't eaten in days, but his weight and muscle mass are steady factors, balanced in an unhinged world. He hasn't shaved, or even brushed his teeth, and should actually look like a hobo in mourning, but Nat has assured him it's quite „hipster“. A few nights back, when the fires were burning, he wandered into the kitchen and started pressing a paring knife into the soft skin of his forearm... but then put it down again because he knew it wouldn't show, wouldn't even hurt for more than a few seconds, knit itself together and leave no trace behind. The serum has cursed him with a perfect body holding a shattered mind. 

There are other things in his dreams too, besides the fire. Dark, towering things that awaken the most pure, primal fears, and he can't even make out if they are living or dead, let alone what they are going to do to him. As soon as he wakes, they scatter [like so many brown leaves in the wind, rising up on a gust and then dissolving into fine dust with not even a warning, not a sound, not even a sigh].  
And he can't remember what he was so scared of, all he is left with is a feeling of all-encompassing, crippling loneliness. He feels like the very last human left on planet earth. 

He isn't, though. Nat doesn't talk much these days, just flits in and out of the rooms at base like a ghost, sometimes casting him a snide remark. She has ripped two punching bags within the last three days. They don't speak about it, but a few nights ago he found her curled up on the bathroom floor with tears streaming down her face and hideous, squealing, animal-like sobs ripping from her throat. He held her for hours, but when he closed his eyes, he could see the flames on the insides of his lids [the ashes the dust all gone with the wind]. 

His mother used to be there, always, like a friendly candle in the dark. Peggy used to be like a torch in his mind, bright and warming, lighting the way, but fierce and burning hot when you came too close. Now they both have all but gone up in the forest fire that is his life. 

He's gotten the hang of surprisingly many things at this point – more so, he keeps surprising himself every day. Modern life is fast-paced and confusing, but it doesn't matter as long as he has his friends. Had He has taught himself so much about technology recently, he had almost reached a stage of feeling like he belonged here. Bucky would've laughed. Would have. 

He never asked for this. 

If someone had told him back then about the future, about all the fights he would fight, the adventures he would have, he would have laughed, too. Until it wasn't fun and games any more. He refuses to believe that he wasn't ready to be Captain America, but it's safe to say Steve Rogers got more than he bargained for – enough, if not too much, for many lifetimes. 

He feels like he finally grew up in the 21st century, and if he could do something, anything, to turn back time, he would. Just to be so young and fierce and incredibly, endlessly naive again. To let the flood come and extinguish the flames, to cool and soothe. But it never does. 

Steve remembers losing Bucky so many times, it's engraved in every fibre of his being. 

Back when Bucky left for Europe – and it feels like another life, on top of another time, nowadays – it was mainly envy that was smoldering inside of Steve. He believed, back then, that Bucky was going on an adventure he was denied, that he would come back with medals and glory and stories to tell his grandchildren while Steve stayed behind. However, a tiny part of his mind knew what war meant, and even though he ignored it as best as they could, sometimes a little fiery voice whispered to him at night that not everyone always came back. Deep inside, however, Steve has always been a hopeless optimist.  
When Bucky fell from that train in Siberia, Steve's world erupted into flames with an intensity that almost knocked him off, too. With his eyes screwed shut, he pressed his face against the cold metal of the train while the wind was howling and whipping around him, but it didn't feel cold, it felt like a blaze of deadly heat threatening to eat him up.  
When Bucky, no, the Winter Soldier, disappeared again, it felt like glowing coals in Steve's head, every minute of every hour of every day that he spent without him, a burning desire, literally, to find his friend. He managed to push it to the back of his mind sometimes, but never for long.  
Knowing that Bucky had lost himself again, gotten lost inside his own head due to a simple string of random words such a short time after Steve had _finally_ found him, that was worse.  
Leaving Bucky with T'Challa in Wakanda, safe and sound and maybe not as broken as everyone had thought, that was friendly fire. Steve couldn't help but miss him, but it was a warm feeling for once, not quite too hot to touch and toy with and have hope. 

Losing Bucky for good felt a lot like burning alive. 

Steve summoned all the force of the old fires when he faced Thanos, but it was not enough. With the intensity of the burn now, he is almost positive it would be, because this is beyond anything he has ever felt before.  
„And if we lose?“, Tony had asked him a long time ago, when it felt like the end of the world but so much less was at stake. „We do that together, too“, he had said then. But it wasn't true. 

He remembers looking at Bucky seconds before the showdown, before T'Challa opened the barrier and Thanos's army broke through. He could draw him from memory, every line on his face. He looked into Bucky's blue eyes, like so many times before – all the chances they got that they should not have had were their lifespans of a normal length, all these exceptional times – and saw strength and determination and, deep down, the spark of joy he knows so well himself, the adrenaline of the fight, of finally getting started because waiting always is the worst part. He doesn't doubt that Bucky was happy then, all pumped and armed to the teeth and surrounded by his best friends, with countless foes just seconds away and an ambiguous ending. Alive. 

The last thing Bucky ever said out loud was his name, and Steve's only comfort is that there was no fear in that voice, just confusion and wonder. It sounds stupid, even to Steve himself, but it helps him to understand the whole old „death is just another adventure“ thing.  
Bucky had reached a point where he wasn't scared of losing control any more, vibranium arm in place and gun in hand and one hundred per cent in the present. In that split second, he had no idea what was happening, but the prospect wasn't frightening to him any more. 

Steve is scared now. He hasn't left base since that fateful day, but he stands at the window and looks at the sky, turning pink in the evening like nobody's business, like the world doesn't give a damn about what happened, he looks at the clouds over a half-depopulated city and is scared. He has felt fear before so many times in his life, has turned it into something he could use, to generate strength in battle and keep his eyes open even when he felt like closing them and shutting out everything else. But now his fear is senseless and endless and leads nowhere but into standstill. 

The course of his own life in the future has never been much of a concern for Steve. Maybe he has become very good at pushing away the thought of a future. Nobody knows what the serum can or can't do, it's both the magic and the tragedy of their lives... of his life. Now the clouds turn a powdery grey-blue as night falls, and he doesn't turn on the light in the room because the fire inside is brighter than any electricity, and Steve thinks he doesn't want to know the future because it doesn't matter, alone at the end of the line. 

It is then that he smashes his fist hard into the windowpane, which doesn't do anything but bloody his knuckles because the glass is designed to withstand crazy alien ammunition. Next thing he knows, he has somehow maneuvered his feet into a pair of sneakers and managed to stay on the elevator all the way down to street level. 

Steve does what he does best. He runs, not knowing if he is running away from things or towards something. The fire is burning in his veins, ignites the building blocks and trees on his way, blazes up where his feet touch the asphalt. It devours dark windows where no one will ever turn on the lights again, empty rooms and shops where no one lives, shops, laughs, breathes any more [where families have been torn apart, relationships destroyed, friendships ended]. The flames follow in his wake, licking at his heels, but now he is running and the air he is sucking into his lungs is free of smoke for the first time in days. There is a sudden cool gust of wind and his face doesn't feel tight and tense from the heat of the fire any more, and there is a wetness on his cheeks when he lifts his hands to rub at it.  
Thunder rumbles in the distance.


End file.
